A 6-year-old girl had to jump over her mother’s body to hide from a killer in her home but ultimately was spared only because she was never intended to be a victim of the murder-for-hire plot, according to testimony and a confession played in court Tuesday.

At a preliminary hearing on murder charges filed against the girl’s father, Christopher B. Wells, and three other men, Douglas County sheriff’s Sgt. Jason Weaver said the girl was awakened by her mother’s screams, then heard bullets fired.

Wells and co-defendants Josiah Sher, Micah Woody and Matthew Plake are charged with murdering Wells’ estranged wife, Amara Wells, 39, and his brother-in-law Robert Rafferty Jr., according to charging documents.

The bodies were found in the blood-spattered Rafferty family home southwest of Castle Rock. Investigators believe they were killed in the early hours of Feb. 23.

At the time, Christopher Wells was in jail for violating a restraining order.

The four men also are charged with child abuse. Amara Wells and her daughter had been staying with the Raffertys.

During the hearing, Christopher Wells frequently leaned over and spoke to his attorney. All four defendants sat in a semi-circle, each with two defense attorneys next to him. The attorneys asked that the hearing be closed to the public, but Judge Paul King, who will decide based on the hearing whether enough evidence exists to take the case to trial, denied the request.

Weaver testified that the girl saw her mother on the floor and initially ran upstairs, where she saw a man fighting with her uncle. She ran back down, hopping over her mother’s body, and hid in her room. Bloody fingerprints on the lightswitch in the girl’s room indicate that the attacker looked for her, turning the light on. When she could, she dashed outside through the basement sliding doors and ran hundreds of yards to a neighbor’s house and pounded on the door until they opened. It was 2:50 a.m.

A videotape was played of a two-hour interview detectives had with Sher three days after the killings in which he confessed his involvement. Weaver confronted him with evidence he said would convict him of murder: a glove he dropped in the driveway that had his DNA on it, and the knife he used to stab and slash both Wells and Rafferty.

Weaver also pointed out that the L-shaped mark on his forehead was nearly identical to the shape of an elk on Rafferty’s ring. It was obvious Rafferty had struck him, he said.

“I’m telling you, I know what you did, who you were with, and I have enough evidence to prove it,” Weaver told Sher. “I can tell you feel bad about this. I can tell you feel guilty.”

Weaver prevailed upon Sher to talk, saying it would help the little girl if police knew what happened.

Finally, Sher started telling his story. He said he was offered $20,000, money he never got. He was to get $5,000 each for killing Rafferty and his wife, Tamara, and $10,000 for killing Wells. At the time, Tamara Rafferty was on an out-of-state trip.

Sher explained that he was hurting financially and when Micah Woody asked him to do the killing the week before, he agreed. He staked out the house once, and Woody bought him an old handgun. He also armed himself with a revolver and a knife.

Early that morning, he went through the front door of the house and went downstairs. He shot Wells in the head twice, but one bullet grazed her nose and the other didn’t pierce her brain. Bleeding profusely, Wells ran into the hallway. Sher admitted stabbing and slashing her throat, according to the exchange between Weaver and Sher.

He heard noise upstairs and ran up the stairs. A man came out of a bedroom holding a shotgun. He was loading the shotgun when he saw Sher. After a struggle, Sher brought his gun around and shot Rafferty in the chest, he told Weaver.

He then went downstairs, he said, to retrieve the knife so he could “finish him off,” Sher said.

Sher said he knew where the girl was but decided not to kill her. She wasn’t supposed to be in the house.

Sher refused to name the man who drove him to the Rafferty house, but during his interview, police were also interviewing Plake, who Weaver said also confessed to taking part.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.

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